Chapter 6 – THE GHOST IN THE RAIN
Lightning cracked across the sky, illuminating his face.
I stopped breathing. The rain pelted my skin, but I felt entirely numb. The man holding the gun was older, his face scarred and weathered, his hair graying at the temples. But those were the eyes I had looked into every day for five years. The eyes of my son’s father.
“Liam?” My voice was a broken wheeze. “You’re… you’re dead.”
Liam lowered the gun slightly, glancing nervously over his shoulder into the darkness of the shipping yard. “I had to be, Hannah. If I didn’t die, they would have killed you and Leo.”
The world tilted on its axis. The funeral. The closed casket. The four years of grinding poverty, of crying myself to sleep, of telling my son his father was an angel looking over him. It was all a lie.
“You faked it?” The betrayal tasted like ash in my mouth. “You left us to starve while you played dead?”
“I was protecting you!” Liam stepped forward, desperation in his voice. “I got mixed up with the Morettis. I owed them money. I thought helping Elena Rourke escape would pay off my debt. But Maren caught us. She forced my car off the road. The police thought the burned body they found was me. The Morettis pulled me from the wreck and made me their mechanic. Their slave. If Silas Rourke found out I helped his wife, he would have slaughtered our whole family.”
“Silas isn’t the monster you think he is!” I screamed back, angry tears mixing with the rain. “Where is Leo? Where is Silas?”
Liam flinched. “Inside Warehouse 4. Maren has them. I… I came out to stand guard. Hannah, you have to leave. Maren is insane. She wants Silas to watch the boy die.”
“My son is in there,” I snarled, stepping toward him, completely ignoring the gun still loosely gripped in his hand. “And the man who actually gave a damn about us is in there. I am not leaving.”
“You don’t understand,” Liam pleaded. “Maren is planning to frame Silas for Leo’s death. She wants the police to find Silas standing over the body, so he goes to prison, and she takes the estate. That’s why she left the blood trail. It’s a setup.”
“Then help me,” I demanded, grabbing his jacket. “If you ever loved us, Liam, help me save our son.”
Liam looked at my hands on his chest, a profound shame washing over his scarred face. He nodded slowly. “There’s a side door. It’s rigged with explosives, but I know how to disarm it. Follow me.”
I waved frantically to Marco, who had just rounded the corner, gun raised at Liam.
“Stand down!” I yelled at Marco. “He’s taking us inside.”
Marco looked at Liam, his eyes narrowing in recognition, but he lowered his weapon. We followed Liam through the maze of metal crates to a rusted, unmarked door at the side of a massive warehouse.
Liam expertly clipped two wires on a crude explosive device attached to the handle, then eased the door open.
We slipped inside. The warehouse was cavernous, smelling of oil and seawater. In the center of the room, under a single harsh industrial light, was a scene that stopped my heart.
Silas was chained to a heavy steel pillar. His face was bruised, blood dripping from a cut on his temple, staining his white shirt.
And ten feet away, sitting on a wooden crate, was my seven-year-old son, Leo. He looked terrified, hugging his knees to his chest.
Maren paced between them, holding a silver revolver. Three Moretti guards stood at the perimeter.
“It’s poetic, really,” Maren was saying, her voice echoing in the vast space. “Elena tried to steal a life from me. So I took hers. Now you tried to humiliate me, Silas. So I’m taking this one.” She pointed the gun at Leo.
“Leave the boy out of this,” Silas growled, pulling against the chains. His voice was raw, but it held no fear, only a deadly promise. “He has nothing to do with us. Shoot me, Maren.”
“Oh, I will,” Maren smiled, a manic glint in her eyes. “But first, I want you to feel what it’s like to lose a child.”
She cocked the hammer of the revolver.
“No!” I screamed, breaking out of the shadows.
Maren spun around, her eyes widening in shock as I stepped into the light, with Marco and Liam right behind me.
“Hannah?” Maren laughed in disbelief. “Well, isn’t this a family reunion.”
She looked at Liam, then at me. And then she smiled, raising a small remote detonator in her left hand.
“You brought the mechanic back,” Maren mocked. “Too bad. Because I didn’t just wire the door. I wired the crate your son is sitting on.”
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